Numerical simulation of vortex-induced vibration of a circular cylinder with low mass-damping in a turbulent flow

In this paper, we present some numerical results from a study of the dynamics and fluid forcing on an elastically mounted rigid cylinder with low mass-damping, constrained to oscillate transversely to a free stream. The vortex shedding around the cylinder is investigated numerically by the incompressible two-dimensional Reynolds-Averaged Navier–Stokes (RANS) equations. These equations are written in a primitive formulation in which the Cartesian velocity components and pressure share the same location at the center of the control volume. The numerical method uses a consistent physical reconstruction for the mass and momentum fluxes: the so-called consistent physical interpolation (CPI) approach in a conservative discretization using finite volumes on structured grids. The turbulence modeling is carried out by the SST K– ω model of Menter (AIAA 24th Fluid Dynamics Conference, Orlando, FL, USA). The numerical results are compared with the 1996 experimental results of Khalak and Williamson (J. Fluids Struct. 10 (1996) 455). The Reynolds number is in the range 900–15 000, the reduced velocity is including between 1.0 and 17.0. The mass ratio is 2.4 and the mass-damping is 0.013. Several initial conditions are used. According the initial condition used, the simulations predict correctly the maximum amplitude. On the other hand, the numerical results do not match the upper branch found experimentally. However, these results are encouraging, because no simulations have yet predicted such a high amplitude of vibration.